SHERBURNE – The U.S. State Department of Agriculture is investigating if the loss of a Sherburne beekeeper’s 39 of 40 hives this past winter was the result of a larger national trend involving the mass death of honey bee populations, often referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder.
Sherburne residents Lash Taylor and Pat Forester have been cultivating hives for their honey for the last nine years. At the end of last year’s season, the couple had 40 functioning hives, with each hive containing one queen and around 50,000 workers. Last year the couple harvested about 800 pounds of honey.
Taylor explained that every year domestic bee keepers typically lose between 25 and 30 percent of their hives.
“But you don’t expect to lose 97 percent of them,” added Taylor. “In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen it this bad before. It’s true it was a hard winter for the bees, but we’ve had weather like this before and it wasn’t nearly this bad,” said Taylor.
What happened to the bees?
Typical of other diagnosed Colony Collapse cases, the bees simply disappeared from the hive.
“I think it must be Colony Collapse Disorder, the hives were empty, like the bees just left behind all their food stores and flew off to die in the cold weather,” said Taylor. “If it was an infection, a fungus or a pesticide issue – I’ve seen those before – then we’d be finding dead bees all over the place and we haven’t really found that many,” said Taylor. He said he did find a couple of hives filled with thousands of bees, but the vast majority of them were empty.
The couple contacted the Department of Agriculture this Spring for assistance and a representative inspected the local operation. Repeated calls to local Department of Agriculture officials over the last week went unreturned.
Cornell Cooperative Extension Horticulture and Natural Resource Educator Rebecca Hargrave reported being in contact with the department, saying they were looking into the possibility of the disorder playing a part in the lost Sherburne hives.
Hargrave said there was yet to be a confirmed report of Colony Collapse Disorder in New York state, but that the Department of Agriculture had investigated about a dozen suspicious incidents in 2010. She said the agency was already receiving additional reports of similar issues for 2011, including the one in Sherburne.
What causes Colony Collapse Disorder?
Hargrave said one main theory among researchers contends not one but a combination of increased stresses, including possible factors such as fungus and mite infestations, cell phone transmissions, the use of pesticides and changes in weather, were all responsible.
“Every thirty years there is a wave of dying-off that affects the national bee populations, hopefully the colonies that survive will continue. But we’re in a bottle neck right now, of losses,” she said.
“Beginning in October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected during winter weather, the magnitude of loss suffered by some beekeepers was highly unusual. This phenomenon, which currently does not have a recognizable underlying cause, has been termed ‘Colony Collapse Disorder.’ The main symptom of CCD is simply no or a low number of adult honey bees present but with a live queen and no dead honey bees in the hive. Often there is still honey in the hive, and immature bees are present.” reported the USDA., on its website www.ars.usda.gov.
While officials continue to look into the issue, Forester and Taylor have already restored seven more hives after ordering additional bees and collecting groups of them during their early spring swarming season. When hives grow to a certain point, the population will break in half and a new queen is born. Half of the hive flies off and usually takes refuge in temporary shelters, such as tree branches, before locating a permanent home, explained Taylor.
He asked people not to spray honey bee swarms at any time of the year and recommend they contact a bee handler to remove them. Taylor, who said he’s rarely stung, said he collected dozens of these swarms. The couple, who will remove swarms, can be reached at 674-9702.